Hi Dark: Well, there is some truth to braille embossing being prohibitively expensive compared to a print book or menu. I remember when I was in high school and one of the complaints my local high school had about taking me on as a mainstream student was the cost of getting my textbooks from APH. I was absolutely floored to discover while the average print textbook was about $25 APH was asking for about $2,000 per textbook in braille. That was absolutely insane, but now that I have gotten a bit older and wiser I understand why.
For one thing it probably cost them $50 for a standard box of braille paper, and twice that if they used the plastic sheeting used in most textbooks. So figure about $100 tops for the blank pages. The plastic binders they put the books in probably added another $20 or so to bind the books. So just in raw materials we have already increased the cost by a factor of 5. I suspect the rest of the cost was markup on APH's part to pay employees and the use of their equipment. The thing is if I ask company x to braille this or that book, a gamebook for example, they are naturally going to go to APH to have it done not knowing that the raw materials while expensive are a fraction of what APH etc will actually charge them for the final product. That cost of course will get put off onto us, the customer, and that is why you will get the typical its prohibitively expensive type response from companies, because they aren't going to invest in the equipment etc to do it themselves, and even if they did the cost of the materials would cost a bit more than standard printed materials doubling or tripling the cost of the final product. Cheers! On 12/4/13, dark <[email protected]> wrote: > Hi Tom. > > You do certainly have a point there, certainly in my family with three > visually impared people, two of whome, (my mum and I), braille users, > brailling board games is something we've done for years. Indeed over > christmas we'll probably play some card games or maybe Yachzee, and if we > play Yachtzee my mum and I will both braille score sheets. > > Although when I investigated getting fighting fantasy books done, I was told > > that the cost would be prhibitive, which is of course the concern since > while braille embossing isn't itself an intrinsically expensive process as > usual with anything to do with accessibility, you can put on several extra > zeroes. > > I actually got a great example of this recently when going to Tgi fridays > with my brother. This is one of the few restaurant chains in the Uk that > has braille menus, (I assume they do in the states as well). However, their > > braille menu is about two years out of date, and still shows things they no > > longer serve, not to mention missing off their specialist offer. > > when I asked why this was I was told that getting a new braille menu > embossed would be too expensive. > > This isn't to say it's a bad idea, just that with any coorporation I am > scheptical of motives, ---- still if you don't ask, you don't find out. > > Beware the Grue! > > Dark. > > > --- > Gamers mailing list __ [email protected] > If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to > [email protected]. > You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at > http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. > All messages are archived and can be searched and read at > http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]. > If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, > please send E-mail to [email protected]. > --- Gamers mailing list __ [email protected] If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to [email protected]. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to [email protected].
